In a recent blog post on All Star Charts, we discussed the importance of big bases. In a nutshell, we like big bases because it reveals levels of "price memory" and indicates institutional support. You can read the post here.

At times of market uncertainty, indecision, or stress, it can be constructive to focus our attention to stocks in the process of building bases or just emerging from them. Today's market environment certainly qualifies as uncertain if not also indecisive. As such, we're digging into stocks that have recently broken out from significant bases.

One of the most important concepts we talk about in Technical Analysis is confirmation.

Whatever thesis we have, we need price to confirm it before we can act...and if it doesn't then we need to respect that and get out of the way.

Risk management is our main priority and two simple charts do a great job of highlighting why we wait for confirmation.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Tuesday's Mystery Chart is one of my favorite charts right now, so thank you all for your feedback and participation.

I received a lot of answers, but I'd say 1/3 of you were buying a breakout, 1/3 were fading this strength, and the last 1/3 were yawning and off to find something more exciting.

With that as our backdrop, let's get into it.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

Last night was our Members-Only Conference Call where we discussed the major themes we're seeing across asset classes.

A big theme was the lack of direction within Equities and last month's failed breakout to new highs in the US as we "catch down" to some of the weakness we're seeing globally.

As a result, today I want to revisit an exercise I performed in late May when the environment was pretty similar to today...and that was to look for stocks with "big bases."

Todd Sohn is one of my favorite guys to talk to about the markets. He often sends me charts that no one else is looking at and points out important data that most people aren't talking about. His unique perspective on the market definitely makes him stand out from the rest. Todd and his team at Strategas do great work and it's a real pleasure to have him on the podcast. In this conversation we discuss the current environment for US Stocks, Interest Rates, Precious Metals and the sentiment driving current trends. He offers good advice for both new technicians and seasoned veterans. If you're at all interested in the market, this is an episode you can't miss. Enjoy!

While we haven't raised the Bear Flag quite yet, we have noticed some outperformance in stocks that often are referred to as "defensive." And the recent outperformance of the Aerospace and Defense industries has been particularly noticeable.

As geopolitics tosses and turns from tweet to tweet, we'll focus on the downstream side effects in public markets that offer nimble players the opportunity to profit. And we've got a name lined up that appears to be directly benefiting from recent global "uncertainty."

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

New Mystery Chart!

For those new to the exercise, we take a chart of interest and remove the x/y-axes and any other labels that would help identify it. The chart can be any security in any asset class on any timeframe on an absolute or relative basis. Maybe it's a custom index or inverted, who knows!

We do all this to put aside the biases we have associated with this specific security/the market and come to a conclusion based solely on price.

You can guess what it is if you must, but the real value comes from sharing what you would do right now. Buy, Sell, or Do Nothing?

In this Episode of Allstarcharts Weekly, Steve and I talk about the underperformance of European Stocks and the fact that it's their weighting in Financials that is, in part, dragging them lower. This has really become an interest rate story as Financials around the world are keeping other countries' markets from breaking out. The overwhelming exposure to Technology continues to keep the US winning relative to everyone else.

When the market seas get choppy, options premiums tend to inflate everywhere you look. Investors get scared and Speculators smell opportunity, both putting a bid under calls and puts as each is willing to pay up for protection and good fortune, respectively.

However, regardless of market direction, options premiums tend to mean revert. In other words, they tend not to stay high for very long before retreating back to some version of average. This creates an opportunity for nimble options traders to profit off of others' misguided notions.

This being our current backdrop, I've identified a nice instrument for fading the current volatility spike.

From the desk of Tom Bruni @BruniCharting

In early June we wrote a post titled "Canada Update" advocating for a patient approach towards Canadian Equities and outlining some well-defined reward/risk setups.

Since not a lot has changed at the TSX Composite or TSX 60 level, we want to take another look two months later to see what's developed under the surface and where there are opportunities to profit.

These are the registration details for the monthly conference call for Premium Members of All Star Charts. In this call we will discuss the global market environment and how to profit from it. As always, this will include Stocks, Interest Rates, Commodities and Currencies. The video of the call will be archived in the members section to re-watch any time and the PDF of the charts will be made available as well.

This month’s Conference Call will be held on Tuesday August 13th at 7PM ET. Here are the details for the call: